Whether you’re looking for an eco-friendly pillow or duvet or want the comfiest summer sheets that are safe and sustainable, the Leaf Score Guide to Non-Toxic Bedding has you covered.
Table of Contents
We spend a third of our lives sleeping (if we’re lucky!), but we rarely think about the safety and environmental impact of our bedding. Even if we’re wise to the toxic chemicals in most mattresses, we might not realize that those same chemicals can also lurk in pillows, duvets, mattress protectors, and even sheets and pillowcases.
Leaf Score’s Head of Research, Leigh Matthews, guides you through the process of choosing non-toxic bedding to create a safe, sustainable, and stylish sleep environment.
What’s in the Guide to Bedding?
The LeafScore Guide to Non-Toxic Bedding is divided into four core sections:
- Bedding 101
- Creating a safe, stylish, sustainable sleep space, including:
- A closer look at bedding components:
- Comforters and duvets
- Pillows
- Sheets
- Duvet covers
- Mattress protector pads and waterproof covers
- How to match sheets and duvet covers
- A closer look at bedding components:
- FAQs about bedding, including:
- Which bedding materials are best for different seasons?
- How can you protect your bedding against bed bugs and dust mites?
- Do thread count and weave really matter?
- The best sustainable bedding brands, including staff tried and tested:
What’s in your bedding?
Buying bedding might seem simpler than folding a fitted sheet. You just choose the correct size and select a fun color or pattern, right?
Not quite. There’s a lot to learn about bedding, and a lot of opportunities to get it wrong.
Choose conventional, chemically treated bedding, or even just the wrong kind of weave or material, and you’re likely to end up restless, uncomfortable, and out of pocket.
Avoid getting tangled up in sheets that are bad for you and for the planet.
Use the Leaf Score Guide to Non-Toxic Bedding to arm yourself with knowledge. That way, you can choose sheets, shams, pillows, and a comforter that offer genuine comfort for years to come.
This guide aims to help you sort through the greenwashing and hyperbole to understand what really matters (and what doesn’t) when choosing pillows, duvets, fitted sheets, and more.
Why worry about bedding?
Your choice of sheets and shams may seem like a low priority, given all the other things we have to think about to safeguard health. Creating a safe sleep space is crucial, though. After all, sleep is when we rest, recuperate, and heal.
Choosing the right kind of mattress certainly helps, but if you’re still using bedding made with toxic chemicals, your body never really gets the break it needs from the onslaught of modern life. The same goes for bedding choices poorly suited to your needs, even if the bedding is non-toxic.
Well made, organic, non-toxic, and sustainable bedding can make a world of difference to how we sleep. And this means more energy for those bigger decisions we all have to make throughout life.
If you’ve gone to the trouble of finding safe, sustainable bedding, you’ll want to ensure you clean it without toxic chemicals.
This can mean switching:
- Dryer sheets for wool dryer balls
- Conventional cleaners for eco-friendly, non-toxic laundry strips or powder
- Chlorine bleach for safer alternatives like hydrogen peroxide or good old sunshine.
Leaf Score Non-Toxic Bedding Recommendations
Already know what you want? Here are our top picks for the most sustainable bedding brands offering quality products to support safe, non-toxic, comfortable sleep:
Sheets
- Avocado
- Homebird – Review
- Sleep & Beyond
- Brooklinen – Review
- Delilah Home
- Rawganique
- West Elm
- Boll & Branch
- Coyuchi
- Whisper
- Sol Organics
- PlushBeds
Pillows
- Savvy Rest
- Avocado Green Pillow – Review
- Turmerry Buckwheat Pillow – Review
- Turmerry Low-Profile Latex Pillow – Review
- Parachute down pillow
- Rawganique shredded latex pillow
- Rawganique shredded latex contour pillow
Duvets and comforters
- Avocado
- Rawganique wool comforter
- Rawganique cotton comforter
Mattress protectors and pads
- Avocado GOTS Mattress Protector